Night Shift

Rosa Delgado had been driving a taxi in Chicago for eleven years, and she preferred the night shift. The streets were emptier, the passengers were more interesting, and nobody tried to make small talk about the weather. By the time most of the city woke up, she would have finished work, eaten breakfast with her son and gone to bed.

At ten past four on a freezing Tuesday morning in February, a man waved her down outside a hospital on the North Side. He was in his sixties, wearing a suit that looked as if he had slept in it, and he was carrying a small paper bag. He climbed into the back seat and said, "O'Hare, please. As fast as you can."

Rosa checked the time. At this hour, with no traffic, the drive would take about thirty minutes. "Which terminal?" she asked. "Five. International." He paused, then added, "My daughter's flight leaves at six forty. If I'm not there by five, she'll have gone through security, and I won't see her."

Rosa pulled away from the curb. For a few minutes, neither of them spoke. The streets shone under the orange lights, and a snowplow rumbled past in the opposite direction. Then the man began to talk, the way passengers sometimes do at four in the morning, when the dark makes it easier to say things.

His name was Walter. His daughter, Grace, was moving to Seoul for a teaching job. She would be living there for at least three years. They had argued, he said, months ago, about something so stupid that he couldn't remember it now, and they hadn't spoken since. He had planned to call her before she left, but he kept waiting for the right moment. Then, last night, he had been taken to the hospital with chest pains.

"It was nothing serious," he said quickly. "Indigestion, they think. But while I was lying there, I realized that by the time she comes back, I'll have spent three more years not talking to my own daughter. I'll be almost seventy. So I discharged myself and called a cab." He held up the paper bag. "I bought her a cinnamon roll from the hospital cafe. She used to love them when she was little. It's a terrible present."

"It's a great present," Rosa said, and she pressed her foot down harder.

They were making good time until the Kennedy Expressway, where a truck had slid across two lanes and the police had closed the road ahead. A line of red lights stretched into the dark. Walter looked at his watch and said nothing, which was worse than if he had shouted.

Rosa had not driven through this city for eleven years without learning a few things. She took the next exit, cut through a neighborhood of quiet houses and parked cars, and joined a road that ran alongside the railroad tracks. "Is this a shortcut?" Walter asked. "It is now," said Rosa.

At four fifty-two, she pulled up outside Terminal 5. Walter was out of the car before it had completely stopped. He pushed some bills into her hand without counting them and ran through the sliding doors, holding the paper bag like something precious.

Rosa should have driven away. There were passengers waiting and money to be made. Instead, she parked and walked inside, telling herself she needed a coffee. Near the security line, she saw them: Walter and a young woman with a large backpack, standing very close together. The young woman was crying and laughing at the same time, and she was eating a cinnamon roll.

Rosa bought her coffee and went back to the car. By the time Grace's plane took off, she had already picked up another passenger, a sleepy student who wanted to go downtown. "Long night?" he asked. Rosa smiled into the mirror. "Good night," she said.